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Israel's latest military onslaught, Operation Protective Edge, resumed on August 8 with fresh bombings that killed a child and injured 15 other Palestinians, teleSUR's Gaza correspondent Noor Harazeen reported that day. It came after Israel refused Palestinian demands to lift its crippling siege 鈥 an essential move to give the battered Gaza Strip any hope of recovery.
Two young people who died in their car on July 25 after using a gas heater to keep warm had been homeless for some time. Dr Bruce Redman from the Salvation Army told the Ballarat Courier after the discovery of their bodies: 鈥淭he Salvos are finding more and more people who are resorting to live in their cars because of a lack of affordable accommodation options. 鈥淲hen it's summer, people tend to sleep on the beach or in their cars and no one really notices. But when it's cold, most people expect to have a roof over their heads, somewhere where they can stay warm.鈥
The United States launched a second round of bombings in northern Iraq on August 8. Earlier on Augus 7, the US jet fighters bombed areas close to the Kurdish town of Erbil. The US government has said they would be limited to a defensive response, but with the second round, the bombings appears to have intensified. The US military is using an armed drone and four warplanes to bomb artillery positions and a vehicle convoy near the beleaguered city of Irbil, the Pentagon said.
Here is the latest 鈥渄eal鈥 from the self-proclaimed that you are not allowed to refuse: He'll withdraw his law change that will give people the right to be bigots and in return his spooks will have access to the past two years of your metadata. My meta-whaaat???
The Newcastle Resistance Centre was packed to capacity on August 3 to hear Shamikh Badra speak about what is happening in his home city of Gaza. Badra said his grandfather was forced from his village in 1948 and ended up in Gaza. He described the geography of the conflict, and how Israel exploits religion to cover the fact that it is occupying Palestinian land. 鈥淚n 1948,鈥 he said, 鈥渢here was no Hamas, no rockets. Yet this did not stop them from invading and committing massacres.鈥
Ten years ago, on August 13 2004, the John Howard government, with the support of the Labor Party, passed legislation that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Queer people did not have the right to marry before the legislation was passed, but the new definition was brought in to close any loopholes and make it explicit that the Coalition government did not support civil rights for gay and lesbian people.
鈥淭his political force should be liquidated,鈥 said Pavlo Petrenko, Ukraine鈥檚 justice minister, quoted in the July 9 edition of Capital (Kiev鈥檚 equivalent of the Australian Financial Review). Petrenko was referring to the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU). For a time in the 1990s, it was the most supported party in Ukraine and it still won 13% of the vote at the 2012 parliamentary poll.
A dove that flew off just after the fall of Afghan Buddha Didn鈥檛 have enough Unoccupied airspace Unoccupied skies To flap its wings to restart the heart beats gone numb Of zillions resting in Graves Segregated apart as For the occupant and by the ccupied. The names on the tombstones of the graves of the occupied Could later become undecipherable, Though they Far outnumber that of the occupants. Hope the dead never wake up, to scrutinize their underrepresented statistics, to check the word limit of reports from Gaza,
Placard at an anti-nuclear action, Perth, 2009. Photo: Jim Green.

Former prime minister Bob Hawke is urging Australia to become the world's nuclear waste dump. But he has little hope of succeeding.

Cuba calls for US to end covert operations The Cuban government has called on Washington to halt hostile covert operations against it, the on August 7. An revealed that a US government program had sent young Latin Americans to Cuba on political missions posing as AIDS-awareness workshop organisers.
The largest coalmine ever built in Australia, and one of the biggest in the world, received from the federal environment minister Greg Hunt on July 28. The Carmichael coalmine in central Queensland, owned by Indian company Adani, is forecast to produce 60 million tonnes of coal a year over the next 60 years. This dwarfs Australia鈥檚 current largest mine, which produces 20 million tonnes a year.
In the same week that employment minister Eric Abetz announced the government would expand Work for the Dole to all job seekers under 50 and that job seekers would have to apply for than previously, billionaire miner Andrew Forrest released his own recommendations for welfare reform 鈥 some of the most punitive ever proposed.